What if the cemetery goes out of business? (classic)

What you'll learn

• 1 (03:02) **The Question: What Happens When a Cemetery Goes Out of Business?** - Host PJ Vogt introduces listener Lucas, who has wondered about this for 15 years after reading a bizarre, first-person website for a cemetery that complained it was being neglected.
• 2 (10:16) **A Life Among the Dead: Expert David Sloane** - Introduction of Professor David Sloane, who literally grew up in a cemetery where his father was superintendent.
• 3 (13:01) **The Ancient and Human Need to Bury the Dead** - A brief history of burial practices, from Neanderthals to modern humans, establishing that the practice is universal but the meaning attached is cultural.
• 4 (15:01) **The Invention of the Modern American Cemetery** - Sloane explains the 18th-century problem of urban development disrupting family burial plots and churchyards.
• 5 (18:07) **Why the Dead Were Moved: Miasma and Romanticism** - Two cultural forces shaped the modern cemetery: fear of disease and a new appreciation for nature.
• 6 (19:56) **Cemeteries as Parks and Places for the Living** - In the 19th century, before widespread public parks, cemeteries like Greenwood in Brooklyn were major recreational destinations.
• 7 (22:07) **The Great American Distance from Death** - Sloane explains how and why Americans began to distance themselves from death starting in the late 19th century.

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